Care Operations Signal System
2025Independent Concept
Concept for a care operations interface coordinating capacity, logistics, and escalation across multiple facilities.
Christine Galligan
Healthcare Innovation Strategist
Helping healthcare teams build systems people trust, adopt, and actually use.
I help healthcare teams see the human realities that decide adoption — trust, stress, motivation, decision-making under uncertainty — before they become costly redesigns. Fourteen years across healthcare delivery, digital health, behavioral science, and design.
ExperienceCVS HealthPhilipsNovant HealthClemson University
What I Do
The gap between what we can build and what people want to live with isn't technical. It's human.
Most innovation fails not because the technology doesn't work, but because it doesn't account for how people build trust, regulate stress, maintain motivation, and make decisions under uncertainty. I help organizations understand those human realities before they become adoption problems, implementation failures, or costly redesigns.
- —Healthcare innovation strategy
- —Design research and behavioral insight
- —AI-enabled healthcare experiences
- —Service and systems design
- —New venture development
- —Caregiving, aging, and future-of-care initiatives
Portfolio
Selected work across research, strategy, AI, and care delivery.
Caregiver HRV Study
2011 — 2015Clemson University
A 3.5-year longitudinal research study exploring whether wearable physiological signals and sensory interventions could reveal and support the felt strain of long-term home caregiving.
Behavior Change at Scale
2019 — 2021CVS Health
Designed and tested behavioral interventions within CVS Health's pharmacy and care-management ecosystem — translating patient insight into programs built for real-world adoption.
Behavioral Health Redesign
2017 — 2019Novant Health
Co-designed a rural behavioral health experience framework across three North Carolina hospitals, with a focus on crisis care, peer support, and the transition from emergency care to follow-up.
Healthcare Policy AI Platform
2024 — 2025Independent R&D
Concept and prototype for an AI-enabled system that helps clinical operators understand legislative and regulatory change before it becomes operational burden.
Somatag
2024 — OngoingIndependent R&D / SOMA Systems
A discreet sensory interface exploring how physiological signals and low-burden cues might support people carrying sustained cognitive, emotional, physiological, or caregiving load.
Current Work Architecture
Adaptive interfaces for human flourishing.
Human capacity changes. Most systems assume it does not. My current work spans independent research practice, public-interest evidence generation, and commercial adaptive systems.
01.
Kutuhala Studio
Consulting practice
Kutuhala Studio — my consulting practice. Research and design work helping healthcare teams build systems people trust, adopt, and use. This is how clients work with me.
View studio work →02.
Umwelten Institute
Public-interest research + evidence
Proposed nonprofit research body studying how healthcare systems can support human capacity before strain becomes crisis.
View institute direction →03.
SOMA Systems
Independent product + IP research
SOMA Systems — my independent product and IP research, including Somatag, a sensory interface exploring how physiological signals can support people under sustained load.
View systems work →- ExploringCaregiver capacity infrastructure through Kutuhala Studio field research and Umwelten Institute evidence framing.
- BuildingSomatag second-generation prototype through SOMA Systems.
- ConveningAdaptive healthcare environments working group through Umwelten Institute.
- DevelopingFuture-care infrastructure concepts for Stanford Biodesign and aligned healthcare innovation opportunities.